


No Orlesian Braids

by aliencereal



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Childhood Friends, F/F, Hair Braiding, Infertility, Infidelity, Non-Explicit Sex, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 11:23:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2189841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliencereal/pseuds/aliencereal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anora goes to bed with hand-picked flowers on her vanity and her hair in messy braids.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Orlesian Braids

Anora Mac Tir is eleven.

She only really has two friends. One is her fiancé, charming but idiotic, and the other is the Couslands' daughter, loud and clever.

When her family visits, Elissa Cousland has her hair in two tight braids.

Anora takes those braids down to do them again, practiced little fingers in soft chestnut hair. Elissa compliments her on her handiwork once she's seen them in a mirror, and offers to return the gesture.

Elissa is nowhere near as skilled, but Anora doesn't redo her own braids after her friend is done. Instead, she hugs her, and accepts an offer to play outside.

They both get told off for getting dirt on their nice dresses, but Anora goes to bed with hand-picked flowers on her vanity and her hair in messy braids.

*

Anora Mac Tir is fourteen.

There was an assassination attempt in Denerim a few weeks before the Couslands' annual visit. Cailan is fine, but there had been some fear when the rumors were still just rumors and no real details had come yet. It brings out the awareness that Anora's youth likely will not protect her from those who do not want her on the throne.

Elissa brings her a little dagger with a silver sheath, adorned with delicately carved flowers. She begs Anora to carry it with her.

She is the only person who gives any thought to the possibility that Anora might be able to defend herself, that she might _want_ to.

In the soft candlelight of Anora's bedchamber, she unbraids Elissa's hair and longs to kiss the skin of her neck.

*

Anora Mac Tir is seventeen.

She is soon to be married, and Elissa is crying with joy. Not because Anora is getting married, not really, but because Anora has just asked her to be her maid of honor.

She is so beautiful that, for a moment, Anora is set to call the whole wedding off and ask Elissa to run away with her.

Then Elissa asks what she wants to do with her hair for the wedding and the moment shatters. Cailan is a prince and she thinks she will likely come to love him.

That she already loves Elissa matters little.

*

Anora Mac Tir is eighteen.

Anora is eighteen, she is in her wedding dress, and she has Elissa Cousland up against a writing desk in the royal palace. Her hair is still down, but maybe that's for the best, because Elissa's fingers are tangled in it, caught in the locks she's supposed to be brushing.

Anora sucks a hickey into the soft flesh of Elissa's left breast, just over her heart. Elissa moans and tips her head back, and Anora wonders what she might sound like with fingers buried inside of her.

During the ceremony, threads of that desire weave between thoughts of her future, her husband and her kingdom.

It is not terribly uncommon for a royal to take a mistress, after all.

*

Anora Theirin is twenty-two.

She should be pregnant by now. Cailan is a young man and she a young woman; they often fall into bed together, even after a few years of marriage. She's worried about it, but she says nothing.

The rumors that she is barren enrage Elissa. Anora sits on the bed she shares with her king and with her lover, watching Elissa pace the room, naked as the day she was born, her hair a mess. Cailan is away at the moment; Elissa is always eager to warm her bed in his place.

Elissa thinks it's unfair that it is Anora they are accusing of infertility. She has strong opinions about Cailan, and very few of them are positive.

It's one of the few things they disagree on. Anora adores her husband. She merely also loves the noblewoman wearing a hole in her carpet.

*

Anora Theirin is twenty-three.

The Couslands have been slaughtered in their beds.

King Cailan has fallen at Ostagar.

She can do nothing but stay strong for her country. She wakes up in the morning and carefully, silently, pins up her hair.

*

Anora Mac Tir is twenty-four.

Her mind and soul belong to Ferelden. She is their queen, and she rules in her own name now, a widow.

But her heart rests with the Grey Wardens.

She tells people that she never remarries because nobody can live up to her father's example.

In truth, it is because the person who meets that standard, who kisses Anora's fingertips and knows to avoid Orlesian braids when they play with her hair, who saved her life and her father and her country, is a woman.

And Maker, what a woman.


End file.
